Mahshid Zahmatkesh

Mahshid Zahmatkesh is a printmaker and instructor specializing in handmade printmaking, with several years of academic teaching experience. Her work deeply explores the unseen layers of identity, psyche, and human relationships. Particularly, her art focuses on the tension between the self and the other, and the impact of external forces—social, cultural, and psychological—on the formation, erosion, and destruction of individual identity. Focusing on traditional printmaking techniques, especially metal printing, she uses this medium not merely as a tool but as a language to capture memories, emotions, and the hidden strata of existence. Themes of "fading," "disappearance," and "destruction" are central to her expression, reflecting the gradual loss and damage of the self in response to subtle and overt external pressures. In her view, this erosion, destruction, and dissolution occur in both women and men; however, in women, these processes often manifest more silently, gradually, and deeply rooted. Through her work, she strives to depict this not as a single event but as a complex, multifaceted human condition. Mahshid Zahmatkesh creates a visual world by combining the human body with natural elements, where questioning, doubt, liberation, and the desire for self-reclamation intertwine.